Open education generally refers to online learning programs or courses that are made publicly available on the Internet or other public access networks. Examples of open education programs may include e-learning programs, Open Courseware (OCW), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), and the like. Various universities and other educational institutions offer open education programs free-of-charge to the general public without imposing any academic admission requirements. Participation in an open education program typically allows a learner to access learning materials relating to a variety of topics. The learning materials may include lecture notes and/or lecture video recordings of a lecture by an instructor at the educational institution.
Various open education programs are currently offered by a number of educational institutions, including, among others, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, the University of Michigan, the University of California Berkeley, and Stanford University. The number of educational institutions offering open education programs has increased substantially since the inception of open education a little over a decade ago. With the proliferation of open education programs, there has been a concomitant increase in the number of available learning materials and the number of lecture videos available online. However, in some cases, learners have difficulties finding specific pieces of knowledge points or concepts wanted in lecture videos because of unstructured and linear features of lecture videos. For example, when the learners want to study or review a certain part of a lecture video, they often have to look through almost the entire video or even play back and forth several times to locate a right spot.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one example technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.